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2.08 A Night Off

He liked his new life. The world was a better, brighter place, now. It was also much darker than he had ever realised. He thought of his old life often, who he had been, the hurt he had caused. He understood now that he had added to that darkness. He had a mission now – to bring the Light of Truth to the world, to make it ready for the time when everyone’s eyes would open.

It had been about six months since the day he had first seen the Truth. The day he had been stabbed. His old life was now behind him, abandoned. Everything about it was gone – shed the way a snake got rid of its skin. He had a new name now, a better name. It fitted in a way the old name never had. He rarely even thought of himself as that person anymore.

He had spent the time since his eyes had opened to the true world training and learning, wanting to shove everything he could into his thick skull. His teachers had decided had he had been training too hard and needed some time to unwind. They had sent him off for a night of fun on the town.

He sat in the bar, wondering what he should do. It was the type of place he would never have been seen in before – very upmarket, swanky even. It was so long since he had been out that he was nervous.

He looked around the bar. It was filled with twenty somethings enjoying their new affluence. He reached out with his new senses, focusing on his newly acquired skill in Life. He saw a man helping a woman up from where she was sitting. On the surface of it, she was very drunk, but…

He looked closer. She was drugged. That cunt must have slipped something into her drink. As they were passing near his table, he sent out a blast of air at their feet, tripping them up. Michael jumped off his seat and went to help the girl up, focusing his Art as he gripped her arm to clear her system of the drug.

“Are you okay?” he asked the girl. “I think you may have had one too many.”

She stood up, looking confused and a little alarmed. “Uh, thanks, yeah.” She turned to look at the other man, “Pete, I’m not feeling so great; I’m going to head home… Maybe I’ll call you some time…”

She headed towards the door. The man, Pete, was following her, saying that he’d walk her to the taxi rank. Michael stayed close behind them. When they got to the door, Michael used his understanding of Forces to whisper in Pete’s ear: “I know that you drugged her.”

Pete stopped, shocked, allowing the girl to escape. Michael stepped up behind him, grabbing him by the arm. “Hey Pete, maybe we should go somewhere else and talk about your drinking habits”, Michael said, smiling, as he lead Pete through the door. He could see that the girl had gone left, towards the taxi rank, so he went right.

“What the fuck, man”, Pete said as he tried to get away, but he couldn’t shift the mass of muscle that was Michael. Michael dragged him down an alley and shoved him against the wall. “What the fuck”, Pete said again, this time more panicked. Michael shoved him to the ground.

“I saw what you tried to do”, Michael said quietly, “and I’m going to teach you a lesson so that you never try it again.”

He didn’t need magic for this. This piece of shit wasn’t worth it. He didn’t deserve to feel the power of Heaven, even in punishment. This was going to be pure physical punishment. Michael started beating the cretin. He kept an eye on Pete’s vital signs to make sure he didn’t kill the shit. He beat him carefully; causing the most pain he could to enforce the lesson. When Pete faded into unconsciousness, he reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. He read Pete’s address from the magnetic strips of his cards and then healed the bastard back to consciousness by slapping him across the face a few times. He threw the wallet onto Pete’s chest and said, “I know who you are now, Pete. I know where you live. If I ever even think that you are pulling this shit again, I will visit you in the night and murder you as slowly as I can.”

Michael kicked him once more for good measure and then walked out of the alley. He looked around to see if anyone had spotted what had just happened and spotted Onyx leaning against a wall nearby, smoking a cigarette.

Michael walked over to him and said, in a dejected tone, “I am sorry, teacher. Tonight I started a fight with a Sleeper and left him bleeding on the ground”.

Onyx took a long drag on the cigarette. “I saw what happened, kid. You intervened, because you saw something bad was about to happen. You took care of it and you took care not to risk the Veil. You could have ripped that guy apart with magic. Hell, you could have even not gotten involved at all and let them walk out of there. But, you did get involved. You saw that something was not right and you fixed it. You have nothing to be sorry about.”

Michael looked up, meeting Onyx’s eyes for the first time. “You’re not angry?”

“No, kid, I’m proud of you”, Onyx said with a rare smile. “Tell me, what do you think of the Arrows…?”